Johannesburg - The Zondo commission will continue to hear evidence related to parliamentary oversight and Eskom today.
Professor Richard Calland is expected to take the stand.
The commission will also hear Eskom-related evidence from acting senior manager of Fuel Resources Dr Ayanda Nteta and former Eskom board member Venete Klein.
Yesterday, transport Deputy Minister Dikeledi Magadzi defended a decision she and other ANC MPs took to reject a motion aimed at investigating the Guptas and state capture allegations.
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AFTERNOON SESSION
MORNING SESSION
Magadzi spent most of the day answering questions on why her committee had dragged its feet in probing some of the alleged wrongdoing relating to the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa.
The commission had earlier heard how Prasa’s irregular expenditure had ballooned annually, from R100 million in the 2013/14 financial year to R24.2 billion in 2017/18, without much corrective action.
Magadzi was forced to admit her committee’s failure to follow up on allegations that the Guptas had tried to hijack a R51bn locomotives Prasa tender, which Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo said was concerning.
In 2016, DA MP Manny de Freitas wrote a request for the establishment of a probe into the matter but that was ignored by Magadzi’s committee.
Magadzi told the commission that her committee had been busy with several pieces of legislation between 2016 and 2018 which made little time for the consideration of the probe into Prasa’s governance affairs, despite the Parliament’s House chairperson responsible for committees, oversight and ICT, Cedric Frolic, having also written to her committee calling for the probe in 2017.
Justice Zondo called on Magadzi to furnish the commission with a list of the legislation she says the committee was preoccupied with when called upon to probe the allegations, within the next two weeks.
He said it was disconcerting that, for years, she and her committee frustrated calls to investigate allegations of state capture and corruption.
“I am concerned that your committee, despite what was known in the public domain in terms of allegations involving the Guptas and despite what De Freitas and Frolic proposed, your committee did not see this issue as requiring their urgent attention. I am very concerned about that,” Justice Zondo said.
Magadzi, however, defended the move by her and her colleagues to shoot down the proposed motion to probe the Guptas and state capture allegations, insisting it was a party decision.
“When I am in Parliament I am not as myself. I am representing the ANC and, therefore, will always and every time make sure that I toe the party line, and that is what I did,” she said.
Political Bureau